


let your branches fork my veins/let your honey tide in me

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 11:20:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11577039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: Silence coagulates in the air. His movements are the controlled, measured ones of someone who has been taught all his life that his physical body is the conduit for every dream inside him. “What--" Dick's voice cracks. “What happened to me?”awhat if?fic.





	let your branches fork my veins/let your honey tide in me

**Author's Note:**

> this fic contains potentially triggering content. non-spoiler-free warnings can be found in the end-notes. if you don't read the warnings first, you read at your own risk.
> 
> title from ["poison tree"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5stzhyS40) by grouper.

“Hey, Bruce.” _Careless,_ he would call Dick’s casual use of that name when Batman is on patrol, but this is a studied impudence. “What are you wearing?”

Batman draws his cape about his shoulders as he crouches on the rooftop. Cold night. Slow night. Still no time to spare for such--frivolity. “A giant bat costume.”

A squeak. Leather. Where is he? Office? Cave? “What makes you think that’s a turn-off?” 

Should Batman play along? “Good sense,” he offers, gruff.

“Ouch.” Dick laughs. Batman strains to hear its sunshiney overtone backwards and forwards for proof his hopes don’t deceive him. “Have you ever been fun one day in your life?”

Batman grips the stone jut of a gargoyle. Suspended over a precipice. Like any other day. “You tell me.”

Dick allows for a pause. Showman. That’s half the trouble. “You know, despite yourself--yeah.” Thump. Thump. Feet on a wooden desk--office.

He considers that. He considers a lot. “I made some modifications to the suit.” Jumping off the edge, he cuts the night with his line.

Dick has to be able to hear the whistle of wind on his end. Doesn’t speak until Batman is striding across the next roof. “Oh yeah?” 

“Redesigned the side panels for better ventilation.” He’s paying for that now as icy winds slice over silent spires and into his sides. A misstep. “Reconfigured the cowl settings.” Ignore the graver misstep at hand.

“Uh _huh.”_ Audible smirk when he purrs, “Talk dirty to me, Bruce.” More squeaking. Settling in for the night. 

More dangerously, Batman is settling in, too.

 

Tap on glass makes Bruce fumble the knot of his tie.

One hand clenches around the edge of the desk, the other sliding under his unbuttoned cuff to touch the utility strap around his forearm before he goes to the window.

Hanging upside down, water pouring off his face and hair--it’s just Dick.

Just Dick. Bruce swallows the barbed thing in his throat and pushes the window open, stepping back to allow him inside.

Dick flips around and slides off the windowsill. Soaked shorts and shirt, shaking off droplets. “What took you so long? It’s pouring out there.”

“Distracted.” He angles his body so that he can see the mirror without turning his back as he undoes his tie and restarts the process.

“What are you thinking about?” Dick’s wet arm hooks around his neck so that he can touch the finished knot. “Hm. Passable. Don’t know if it would meet Alfred’s standards.”

Bruce frowns at his reflection and brushes a bead of water off the grey jacket. Damp now. Can’t be helped. Rolling out his shoulders, he buttons it.

The icy fingertips trailing down Bruce’s nape draw a tense shudder from him. “Damn, _relax._ You’re about to spend the night boozing and schmoozing.”

“I don’t enjoy this,” Bruce reminds him tightly.

“ _I_ do. You look so good.” Warm kiss replaces the cold touch. 

Bruce does not relax.

“I wish I could make it tonight.” Coming around him, Dick sags back against his dresser. Lightning jags across his face. 

He buttons his jacket. “I need to go.” 

Dick’s quiet voice stops him at the door. 

“Save the last dance for me.”

 

On his pillow, the perfect parabola of Dick’s cheek, the black fur of his head. The bristling weapons that are his beautiful eyelashes.

Bruce breathes without moving. Afraid to wake him.

 

“What do you think?” Dick strolls slowly down the staircase into the ballroom emptied of everything but golden light.

“That I let you watch too many Disney movies.” Bruce holds out a hand for him.

“When are you going to let me live my princess fantasy?” Gliding over to him, he kisses the back of his hand, mouth rough and velvet. “May I have this dance, Mr. Wayne?”

He looks lively. Young. Handsome, hair styled and tux tailored. The fabric folds precisely around Dick’s lithe figure as he straightens and steps into Bruce’s chest. 

A dance, only a dance.

Bruce did promise. “I did promise.”

Dick’s hands flatten out on Bruce’s back as they sway. Etchings of music from overhead. Alfred. All that keeps them together some days. “You promise a lot of things.” 

Stricken, Bruce stares down at Dick’s part, then at nothing.

“It’s not bad.” A rueful smile knitted through his voice. “Not all the time. Nothing is.”

His hand wedges under the jacket to squeeze the living warm of his side. “You’ve been thinking.”

“Thanks for saying it like it’s such a surprise,” Dick scoffs in mock offense. Doesn’t speak for a moment while Bruce leads him in gentle circles around the floor. “You have, too.”

“Yes.” No use denying it, and it would be true at any time.

“What are you thinking?” he whispers again. Dick knows him to the bone as he has since the first time he sat on the Batmobile as a boy and tried to diagnose the sicknesses of his heart.

In theory, a useless question. In practice, another step of the dance.

Bruce presses a kiss to his brow. “Should have saved more room in my dance card.”

When Dick buries his face in his shoulder, Bruce cups the back of his head as though he could be a wall between him and the world.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Diana come up to the railing beside him. She crosses her arms over it, bracelets reflecting orange from her sundress. “And you’ll _still_ deny that you’re a romantic.” 

Bruce sips his tea and crushes mint between his teeth. “Yes.”

“It is beautiful here.” The breeze off Lalla Takerkoust blows Diana’s waves back from her thoughtful face.

“Marrakech was his choice.”

Shoes sheltered under the shade of an argan tree, Dick steps barefoot along the bank, hand-in-hand with Donna. An indistinct murmur from her, and his laughter, lighter than Bruce has heard in a long time, floats up to the balcony.

Diana’s focus has not yet wavered from Bruce’s face. “He chooses well.”

He huffs at her gentle double meaning and gives a controlled shake of the head. The sun searing down, he pushes his sleeves up higher against the heat. He should go inside. He could go inside.

Strict now. “They don’t need monitoring. They need space.”

Donna jams the wide-brimmed hat down more securely as the wind plays with its big blue ribbon. Her head bumps Dick’s, and for a second, from under his own carelessly lopsided hat, Dick looks up at Bruce.

His liquid smile rocks Bruce’s heart in his ribs. 

“Bruce.” Diana’s hand closes on his shoulder with enough force that he looks at her. “What could happen?”

Expression sardonic, Bruce says nothing. 

Diana sighs. “Right. Not a question one should ever ask Batman.”

A cloud spills like cream overhead, and Bruce finishes his tea as Dick and Donna splash through the lake’s shallows.

 

“Can I--”

_”Yes.”_

His sucked-in breath pours heat through Bruce’s whole body. Dick’s fingers tug free so that his slick hand joins the dry one at gripping his hips tight enough they might mottle tomorrow. 

A _plunge_ that has Bruce biting a groan and dropping his head between his shoulders and--and--

“Oh my _god,_ Bruce,” Dick moans like he might shake apart already. A hand idles up and down his back, petting him.

Hands and knees. Easier twice over.

What he knows: how it feels when Dick takes him. How far his slim fingers spread him open.

How heavy he fills him.

What he doesn’t: what Dick’s face looks like as he fucks deep into Bruce. He asked for this.

Fine cotton clenched in his fists. Breath heavy gusts.

Steady thrusts, painting pressure into the base of his spine.

Sinking to one forearm, Bruce strokes himself. Almost methodical. Considerate of the pace. He thought he would want it fast, would want to be fucked out of his head. 

Knees dimpling the mattress, eyes closing, he sinks into the moment instead.

Nudges his hips back. Accepts him deeper into his body. Accepts what this means.

Head dropping again, Bruce shows him his nape.

When Dick drapes himself over his body and scrapes his teeth over thin skin, Bruce locks up under him.

Too close. Too much. Something.

At the abrupt _tight_ , Dick whines and presses his forehead to the bite-mark, gasps against the top knob of his spine. “Am I hurting you?”

Bracing for balance, Bruce works Dick off his back. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees Dick’s alarm. Dick prepares to pull away if Bruce wants it.

Of course Dick would. There was no doubt. There was--no doubt.

But that’s not what Bruce wants. Grabbing Dick’s narrow hip, he slams back onto him so hard they both bite back cries.

Arms trembling from the pleasure of it, Bruce rolls his hips back against Dick. A second glance back at Dick’s face shows him wide-eyed for an altogether different reason. “You weren’t hurting me.”

“G-good.” Dick holds his hips flush against him for a second, _grinds_ into him and makes Bruce’s nerves sing. “You scared me.”

Bruce kisses Dick’s knuckles.

Dick terrifies him.

Turning his wrist, Dick takes his hand and compresses them to the sheets as he moves inside him again in long, yearning waves. 

Against the white backdrop, thin fingers spider over thick and then fall between, filling every blank space.

 

_“Almost didn’t recognize your voice.”_

_“Funny. Don’t give up the day job.”_

_“Was thinking more along the lines of a night gig.”_

_“Of course you were...Listen, I would have called sooner, but I’ve been snowed under.”_

_“Have you?”_

_“Don’t ‘have you?’ me. It’s your fault.”_

_“I never.”_

_“Coy never suited you.”_

_“How’s Arkham?”_

_“It’s a pretty sweet outfit these days.”_

_“Sounds like you’ve been there too long.”_

_“Again, whose fault is that?”_

_“Yours.”_

_“I’m serious, though. The food’s not bad. And they introduced a drum therapy program.”_

_“Drum therapy.”_

_“There’s clinical research behind it. They didn’t pull it out of their asses.”_

_“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”_

_“Excuse me for having more faith in the establishment than you do.”_

_“Comes with the territory.”_

_“Ha. No, but--I’m serious about Arkham. Think about it.”_

_“I have.”_

 

“Right. That’s what I told Alfred, too. I just--”

“Dick.”

“What?” Dick looks at him sidelong, guileless. For the past five minutes, they have been holding a mundane conversation with Dick’s suit around his elbows, the long line of his torso exposed.

“Finish changing.” Bruce turns his back on him, ostensibly to study the dirt samples he has lined up on the lab table. Dick’s gaze prickles between his shoulder-blades.

“Oh,” he says, sly. “I forgot.” 

“You _forgot.”_

“Not all of us have perfect memories.” Dick, changed into pajamas now, steps up behind him and crosses his arms across his chest so close Bruce can feel the motion. Too close.

If Bruce had the perfect memory, he would at present have these pictures in his mind: Dick’s apple cheeks as a boy of nine, the trusting look in his eyes, perhaps the laughter in his steps as he ran to Batman across the rooftops. 

Dick, who needs him.

But his brain wrings out nothing more when he looks at him than what he is now. Dick, callow, golden, newly broad at seventeen.

 

_AFTER REELECTION, MAYOR VISITS RENOVATED ARKHAM,_ Bruce reads as soon as he opens the paper. He still has it delivered, which Dick teased him about yet again before he disappeared for his shower.

Just as he reaches for the phone, it rings. 

 

Bruce returns to the Watchtower for the first time in a month, and Clark pulls him aside. “This is dangerous.”

“Of course it’s dangerous. Our lives are dangerous,” Bruce parries back like it’s a matter of simple philosophy.

“Not like this. There are other ways.”

Bruce gives no sign he’s heard him.

“Please,” Clark whispers hoarsely, hand finding Bruce’s shoulder. “We’ll lose you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Bruce draws away from his touch, and Clark can’t do anything but watch his heavy cape sweep around the corner and out of sight.

 

“You’re aware that you’re a crazy person, right?” Robin stares at the file Batman insisted on showing him after his and Speedy’s run-in with Count Vertigo went awry.

Batman just grunts and gestures for him to click on it.

“Okay. Just as long as you know.” Shaking his head, Robin opens the file. Profiles of each of Dick’s team-members fill the screen. Current locations. Blood types. Weaknesses. Potential threats. “Uh...yikes.”

“It could happen to your team,” Batman says sternly. “The Justice League was infiltrated three months ago.”

“What?” Eyes indignant white circles behind his circles. At fourteen, still tiny. Batman’s chair dwarfs him. If Batman weren’t supposed to be better than the shadows he mimics, he would sweep Robin up in his cape and hide him away forever. “I didn’t hear about that.”

_”If you wanted me to be normal,”_ Dick told him once, fond, _”you should have never brought me home with you.”_

Batman raises his eyebrows. 

“Oh, okay. You’re just that good, huh.” Robin huffs and bounces back against the chair, throwing a bent knee up against the desk. “How do I know you didn’t just make that up?”

_”After I saw you, of course I had to be like you.”_

Because this doesn’t matter enough for Batman to lie to Robin. “The files,” he reminds him.

Folding himself over the desk, Robin taps through to the incident report. He looks back at Batman, fresh awareness rubbing the corners of his mouth downward. “Huh,” he says, small. Should Batman have betrayed the myth of invincibility to this boy? “Guess it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.”

 

When Clark passes by the control room later, he finds him watching the security footage of Clark’s whispered conversation with Bruce.

Although a minute kick in his pulse suggests to Clark that he’s realized he’s not alone, he doesn’t acknowledge his presence at first. So much like Bruce, and then again not at all, yin-yang.

Hands buried in his pockets, head bowed, Dick Grayson looks unbearably adolescent.

Shrewd blue eye when he looks up. “You heard his heart. Was he lying?”

“I think,” Clark says, deliberate, “he believed what he was saying.”

Dick snorts. “Nice way of saying _you_ don’t.”

Bruce’s face, caught closed-off by the surveillance camera, is still safer to look at than Dick’s.

 

_“What’s the story, again?”_

_“Rock-climbing accident.”_

_“Wow. What a way to go.”_

 

Rustle of paper. Not paper. Slicker sound. “You didn’t tell me you were this cute as a kid.” 

Bruce diverts his stare from the pile of equipment to see Dick brandishing a very familiar photo album. “Where did you get that?” he demands, betrayed.

Dick searches restlessly through the darkest corners of the house. Lies listlessly on the concrete rim of the fountain in the garden for hours. 

Bruce buries himself down in the Cave while Dick wanders without him. They could both use the space, it seems. Only sometimes does Dick seek him out during the day instead of just slipping into Bruce’s bed after patrol.

“Alfred and I were cleaning out the attic. He doesn’t know how it ended up there. I think I know.” Dick pops it open and points, gleeful. 

A painfully teenage Bruce slouches beside the blue sedan Alfred used to teach him to drive, looking just away from the camera, surly under choppy hair.

Over the plastic cover, Dick traces down the line of his pale jaw, expression soft. “Hadn’t grown into your good looks, huh.”

Bruce would return the insult, but he can’t remember a time when Dick wasn’t beautiful. There are albums sitting at eye-level on his study’s bookshelf that can attest to that.

“Look at that. Were you always that serious?” He’s leafed back years to Bruce, age about six, school uniform and scowl.

His lips thin.

_”Wow._ I’ll take that as a yes.” Pensively, he stares down at the picture. “I always kind of wanted to think of you as a happy kid, you know? Before all of it. It’s hard to think of you unhappy your whole life.”

“I wasn’t.”

Dick looks up, brow furrowing. 

“I wasn’t unhappy my whole life.” Bruce lifts his eyes to Dick’s face.

Smile incandescent, Dick shuts the album and kisses his cheek, soft, soft.

 

Scattered, shattered porcelain. Screaming.

Bruce sets down his schoolbag and picks his way through, peeking from the foyer into the sitting room.

His mother on her knees in a dress the color of wine, wailing into manicured hands. Father, hand on her back, tentative in his sharp blue suit and clean-shaven jaw. 

Juxtaposition, he remembers from theory he learned in class today. Here, a curious tableau of perfect and ruined.

They were supposed to go on a date tonight while Bruce was to stay with Alfred and work on his art homework, and he does not understand what is wrong. 

“It’s all right, Martha,” his father is soothing, “it was only a vase.” He raises a hand carefully to her curled hair.

His mother jerks away. “It’s broken,” she insists. “I broke it. I broke it!”

“Have you taken your medication?” Bruce can hear him suck in a breath. “You were drinking--”

“So I can’t drink now?” She claws at the arm around her. Shrieks. Sound Bruce has never heard out of a person before. 

“Martha--of course you can--” Strained voice. Blood on his father’s forearm, which he hides with a hand. “Let’s get you to the doctor…”

Bruce jumps at the cleared throat behind him. Alfred, his expression of well-worn severity a comfort when everything else is suddenly strange and frightening.

“I believe you have homework to do, Master Bruce.”

“Yes, Alfred.” Bruce starts robotically up the stairs. One glance over his shoulder at the finery ground into the carpet.

Where in the whirlwind of society pages and Saturdays at the soup kitchen and going to the orchestra together does this fit, his father consoling his inconsolable mother as valiantly as he does anything?

The door slams shut, the car snarls to life in the driveway as Bruce tries to piece his perception of his parents back together.

 

_”Can I take the bandages off now?”_

_“You are still in the process of healing.”_

_“They_ itch.” __

_“Nasty place to become infected, but if you insist--”_

_“Okay, okay, I’ll leave them. But how much longer…?”_

 

“Okay. Okay, Wally. I’ll let you go now. Yeah. No--no, have fun on your date. See you--talk to you later.” Dick closes his laptop quickly. Not so quickly that Bruce doesn’t see a freckled face and red hair on the screen, but the video from Dick’s side dark, turned off. “Did you need something, Bruce?”

Bruce blinks once. “Checking in.”

“As you can see, I’m fine.” Dick sighs as he hangs over the back of his chair. “I can handle myself, you know.” Wry, a little.

Right. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“I’m not doing anything _now._ ” Half a roll of his eyes before Dick stands and paces back and forth. He combs a hand through his hair and then looks right at Bruce. “You know, maybe that was the problem all along.”

Although he does not follow, Bruce sees the look in his eye, fire and ice, and lets him speak without interruption.

“I was becoming too independent, wasn’t I? I was _outgrowing_ you.” Dick circles around Bruce, close enough that the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

Dick knows when he lies, and Dick does not like it. Bruce says nothing.

“I bet you like this! I bet you like that I’m--that I’m locked up here, and I can’t _go_ anywhere, and when I should be at college or working or doing something with my life, I’m stuck here with you in this...this _madhouse.”_ Dick lets out a rattling breath, lip raised over teeth.

“You liked Guatemala,” Bruce offers into the pause.

“Guatemala? I’m not asking for _Guatemala,_ Bruce! I’m asking for _Gotham._ I want to walk downtown. I want to see the Christmas tree in the square this year.” His tone thins into pleading. “Don’t you see, Bruce? The city I grew up in with you is becoming a foreign country to me.”

His words wind Bruce. When he finds his voice, he tells him, “We’ll try to see the lights this year.”

Dick stares at him for a moment, and with so much of his expressiveness erased, he could be thinking anything. “Morocco,” he says, clipped. “That’s where I want to go next.”

 

“Several weeks’ absence has only fueled your celebrity, Master Dick.” Alfred hands Dick a glossy magazine stuffed with rumors about the Wayne scion’s sudden disappearance. 

Fortunately, Robin works with his own team away from Gotham enough that no one has taken notice of the empty space at Batman’s side yet. That, however, is only a matter of time.

Dick scoffs as he opens it. Shakes his head gingerly. After the latest attempt at treatment, he says he’s _one big ache._ “Guess I’m really gonna have to make sure the paparazzi get my good side now, huh?”

Exchanging a glance with Alfred, Bruce clears his throat. “We can’t let the public see you.”

Slowly, Dick sets down the magazine, frowning as best as he can. “Robin,” he exhales as the realization dawns. “The papers got pictures, didn’t they? Too distinctive. They’d peg it in a second.”

Bruce can only nod. Can only hope for his understanding in this, too. He always understands so well. He always knows what he needs to do.

“What do I have to do?” Dick swallows.

Best to be succinct. “You have to die.”

 

_”Batman.”_ Down the comm, Dick’s voice splits down the middle.

Batman tears through the city.

Not fast enough.

On the scene, his mind feeds him a hundred useless details. 

Pharmaceutical company, new Gotham research branch, applied for a Wayne Foundation grant still in processing. White brutalist building, charred black. 

Fire lobbing sparks into the air. Tiger-orange glinting off the stripes on the firemen’s coats. The wail of sirens. 

Sobbing.

Two hours ago, they were fighting. Dick’s hands balled into fists, shouting himself raw, Bruce stiff-shouldered and terse. Something about his friends. Something about school. Dick left for patrol alone. 

Batman let him go alone. He is already sixteen, after all. 

He is only sixteen.

“Where is he,” he snaps at Gordon, senseless. _”Where is he.”_

Gordon just shakes his head. “He went back inside.”

Batman makes an animal sound and tries to dive back into the building, but two men wrench him backwards. “I have to go inside. I have to go inside. Jim, _please.”_

His heart was in that building. The whole of him. 

If Batman’s inaction has taken Robin from the world, the brightest thing he has ever known in it, none of it will have been worth it.

Breaking their grip, he lunges forward again. _”Please.”_

There. A scrap of yellow. Red and green.

Supported between two men stumbling from the entrance of the building, fire gnashing at their heels, faces soot-coated.

Robin.

Limp. Bloody. But he can see--he can see, under the vest, the shallow rise and fall of his breath.

He would not be able to recount his next movements later. Robin in his arms. Heavy. Hurt. Alive. “You came,” he rasps. “I knew…”

Get him home. Get him safe. 

“I’m sorry.” Batman clutches him like he can lock him in his chest and bury the key, like that will fix what he has done and what he hasn’t done, and he takes him away.

 

“Congratulations.”

“Go ahead, pretend you had nothing to do with it.”

Looking up as his friend squeezes his shoulder, Bruce shakes his head. “I didn’t. You earned it, Mayor.”

“Going to have to get used to that.” He sips his scotch appreciatively, then sets it down with a sigh. “But I can’t bask too long. Got a lot of work to do.”

“Can’t remember the last time you sat on your laurels.”

“I can.” He rubs his smooth jaw with a full, bright smile. “Student council president, remember?”

Bruce winces at the memory. Boys carrying him through the hallways of the academy and then dumping him on his backside. Bruce left to pick him back up and treat the internal wounds with pilfered liquor.

He laughs and shakes his head. “Good times.”

Taking a small sip, Bruce does not verbally dissent.

“How’s that boy of yours doing?” He smiles. “I don’t know if I ever figured you for paternal. You did mentor some of the underclassmen.”

Bruce shifts and swallows back the _he’s not my son,_ the echo of _you’re not my father_ that Dick shouted at him that morning. “With his friends.” With Roy, he suspects unhappily. Just a suspicion, since Dick only tells him where he’s going and who he’s with when it suits him these days. “Keeping up his grades, at least.”

“Calculus by day, saving Gotham by night? Good that he can--balance.” His acceptance of Robin has been glacial. “He’ll be applying to colleges next year, won’t he?”

Something ugly licks up Bruce’s gut at the reminder of their impending separation. At the reminder that as distant as Dick grows and grows, it will be nothing compared to the snapping of the string to come after his senior year. 

So far, despite Bruce and Alfred’s cajoling for him to craft something marketable from his intelligence, Dick has shown little interest in any of the best colleges across the country. Neither has he indicated any greater interest in universities in Gotham. Robin is his sole focus, sometimes, with his teenage temper, even Batman be damned.

The rest is up in the air. Where Dick likes best to be.

Making a noncommittal sound, he sips his scotch and diverts the topic. “What’s the agenda for your first week in office, Mayor Dent?”

When Harvey answers, his flawless smile carries campaign-poster charisma.

 

“Slowly,” Alfred cautions.

“Jesus, they have to come off some time.” Dick nevertheless slows his hand as he unwraps the bandages. Expression steady, his arm’s tremors betray the pain he must be in even after weeks of healing. He hisses through his teeth when the damaged skin is exposed to the air.

Bruce clears his throat, a thunderclap in the quiet cave. “All right?”

Dick rubs his hand across his collarbones, swallowing. He reaches with shaking fingertips to touch where he is ruined red _raw_ \--

Alfred snatches the boy’s hand out of the air and squeezes his fingers in his own.

“Sorry, Alfred,” Dick says as though Alfred has caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “Can--can I see?”

The question makes Alfred and Bruce exchange a long, long look.

“It’s his right,” Bruce insists, strained.

“That does not make it wise, Master Bruce. Master Dick, perhaps--”

This incenses Dick. He sits up, ramrod straight. “Can I see.” His fingers twist in his lap, eyes flicking, flickering. “Can I have a mirror. Please.”

Against his better judgment, Alfred hands him a mirror.

Dick lifts the mirror to his face, and he looks. Silence coagulates in the air. The boy barely breathes. When he sets down the mirror, his movements are the controlled, measured ones of someone who has been taught all his life that his physical body is the conduit for every dream inside him.

“What--” His voice cracks. “What happened to me?”

Part of his face is still lovely, blissful bone structure, the radiance of youth. Shapely dark brow, clear blue iris lavished with rich eyelashes. Part of his face.

Exactly half.

 

Groaning through his teeth, Batman shields himself against the wall of the shed to block the blows. His other arm, deadened by an earlier hit, scrabbles uselessly in his belt for some defense.

Landing of light feet. A slender shade in the night. One brown hand grasps the thug around the throat and slams him into the opposite wall. The other wrests his knife from him.

“No!” To his own ears, Batman’s voice sounds inhuman. Through the pain, he pushes himself onto his knees, imploring. Whatever Batman feels now cannot compare to what Dick felt, lying curled on the floor, his being burning away. Cannot compare to the agony Dick _will_ feel if he cuts away the last of himself.

Under the stars, the blade glints.

“Don’t do it, Two!” Batman shouts, hoarse. Hand fumbles for his comm. Their _rule._ The only law they obey when they break every other. He thinks it’s on his behalf, but Batman has to stop him. “This is not who you are. You’re better than this. Justice. Not vengeance.”

The blade drops from elegant fingers. Then they ball into a fist and smash into the thug’s face. Again. Again. Until the crunch of bone starts sounding like the squelch of flesh. Blood sprays across the hemisphere of his face not covered by his mask.

Clicking. Yellow vinyl boots on the wooden floor. The shout of a woman’s voice. Argument. The thug cast aside, and a flash of cape as Barbara shoves him up against the wall, snarls in his face. He snarls back something formless.

In Batman’s peripheral vision, Barbara tries to pull him aside, but he reaches Batman, drops to his haunches before him.

“Are you all right?” Glove crimsoned, Dick touches Batman’s face. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.” In this small dark space, there is something claustrophobic about the sugar slice of his grin.

 

The aroma of baking wafts through the halls. Alfred hums to himself as he tests with a skewer. No batter sticks to the wood. Satisfied, he pulls the hot pan out of the oven.

“Alfred!” 

He can hear the telltale swoosh of the boy sliding down the banister, and a small smile touches Alfred’s lips. _Boy_ is almost technically inaccurate with Dick’s teenage years nearly in the rear view, but seeing all of his exuberance, he cannot help but apply the label.

It is a good day.

“You’re baking!” He slides into the kitchen on his socks and nips a muffin from the pan in Alfred’s hands. Predictably, he ends up dropping it and blowing on his fingertips. “Oh man.” Reapproaching the muffin with new caution, he juggles it between his palms. 

“Some patience may aid you in this endeavor,” Alfred notes as he leaves the pan to cool and removes his oven mitts.

Dick hums nonchalantly around a mouthful. He takes one more bite before he sets it down on the plate and wipes the crumbs off his lips. “You’re really good at this harmless angle, huh.”

Alfred hesitates briefly. “I beg your pardon, Master Dick.”

From his belt at the back, Dick produces an unfortunately familiar black handgun. “Nice one, Alfred.”

Guns are anathema to both of his charges, which is why he keeps them secreted safely out of sight. This one came from his sock drawer. 

Alfred understands their ethical concern well, and Bruce’s personal anxiety even better, and still he is not lofty enough a man to abandon the practical defense of a good shot.

“This is for me, isn’t it?” Dick presses the gun to his own temple. “In case I _turn.”_

Animal fear stings his blood, and it’s all that he can do not to tackle the boy to the ground before he can make good on the foolhardy threat. “I have carried a gun,” he says, stiff-lipped, “since before Master Bruce was a twinkle in his mother’s eye.”

“So you want to tell me you’ve never thought about using it on me? On a bad day?”

Dick sets the gun down, and Alfred’s shoulders come down. Then he slides it over, and he tenses again.

He cannot deny that he has considered it as a final, final precaution. First and foremost, it would rob the brave boy he sees struggling inside of his rightful chance at reclaiming his life. And even if there were no other way, it would break Alfred’s heart. It would possibly shatter Bruce entirely.

It is an option far, far less than it is _not_ an option.

“I could not bear it,” Alfred tells him at last past the lump in his throat, and that is absolute honesty.

“I’m not dismissing the idea,” Dick says pragmatically, looking straight at him with one clear eye. “If you need to do it to protect Bruce--”

“God willing, it will never come to that.” Alfred has to take a seat. His fingers tremble at his temple.

“I know you would. I’d want you to, even,” Dick tells him lowly. “What I want to know is what’ll happen when you’re gone.” 

The thought is never far from Alfred’s mind. He has contacts at Arkham and at GCPD, he has all but drilled Bruce on emergency protocol, they have covered alternatives again and again. Who else could have taught Bruce to have so many contingency plans?

Yet he knows that will not be enough. 

So does Dick.

Dick turns his face, then, all twisted exposed sinew and stretched contorted skin, pain fused with flesh. “One day you’ll die, old man.” His mouth jags up in a terrible smile. “Who’s going to save Bruce from me then?”

 

Year round, rain or shine, the cave is cool and damp. Spring, when the world flourishes green, the cave drags down grey.

“You know, you don’t have to pretend not to look anymore.” Dick strolls past him on bare feet. The cold down here makes his nipples perk despite the flush of warmth from the shower. “It’s all perfectly legal. Above ground now, so to speak.”

Dick Grayson turned nineteen two weeks and one day ago. Legally, Dick Grayson is dead. None of this is above ground.

_”You’re the only one who can save me.”_

“What’s the problem?” Dick stands in Bruce’s space, hands on his towel-covered hips. “I _want_ you.” Previous knowledge of this fact be damned; its admission shakes down Bruce. “I don’t want anybody _but_ you.”

“You couldn’t have anyone else.” Not _needless_ cruelty. Locked up in this echoing house, flying only by night, Dick who could have once had anyone he lingered on with his eyes for too long has no options now.

“Works out well for you, then, doesn’t it.” Spinning Bruce’s chair around, Dick swings himself into his lap.

Paralyzed, Bruce stares at his mouth.

Dick tosses a smile like a dagger, and Bruce bleeds.

Spinning his chair again, Bruce pushes Dick up against the desk by his hips and holds him there. Bruce will do nothing to him. If he gives in--he cannot give in--to which half would it be?

Dick, terror-glint in his eyes and fast fast breath, asks, “You won’t send me away, will you?” He rubs the satiny side of his face against Bruce’s throat. Vulnerable. Evil.

Bruce swallows. Swallows again.

“You took me in.” Splinters of glass in his voice. “You let this happen to me.”

_”This would have never happened if you left me at the orphanage.”_

“So why do you want this?” Bruce asks past the wound in his throat.

“I want to have,” he says, a raw whisper, “ _something_ from you. Give me something, Bruce.” He lifts his chin, tumbled rocky eyes, one clear, one opaque blue. “I want you,” he tells him, which is something else entirely.

_Which part of me?_ “Which part of you?” Bruce’s hands dig into the tender temptation of his flesh.

_”You did this.”_

“All of me,” Dick breathes, fanatic. Teeth on his neck. “All of me.”

What is it to slide deeper under the surface?

Later, scarred face hidden against Bruce’s naked chest, Dick takes his hand under the sheets.

“What are you thinking?” Embarrassing to ask when he never had to before. But everything is broken down new faults now.

“When I was a kid, I wanted us to be together forever.” Dick’s mouth moves against him as he murmurs.

Bruce’s hand stills in sweeping his soft hair over his burned scalp. “And now?” The sheets on the cave mattress scratch on sticky skin as he tries to pull him in enough to make their bodies one again.

Turning his face against Bruce’s body, clutching at him, too, Dick confesses, “Now I can’t let you go.”

_”You have to lock me away. You have to do it.”_

His heart beats double time. He holds Dick tight. As Bruce closes his eyes, a drop from a stalactite, high up and away, pecks cold onto his forehead. “Neither can I.”

 

White stripe sinuous along his side as he crouches on the ledge beside him. Brighter than Batman. Even now. 

“Did you set the fakes, Two?” Batman asks, low. While Dick was recuperating, he helped from the Cave and call himself _Penny-Two._ It stuck.

“Fakes?” The knotted purple of what is exposed by his half-mask remains unrecognizable as who he used to be.

Suppresses a shiver. This is still Dick. All of this is Dick. And none of this is Dick. “Two, what did you do?”

Two with that quicksilver smile. Then, tensing, he points upward.

Batarang in his fist, Batman slings it up to the goons making to leap down onto their heads. He grabs his grappling hook, and so does Dick. In concert, they swing up to the roof. In the moment now. No time. He punches one, but two more come after him. 

This is a big case. Batman needs the help.

Darting in front of him, Two swings his leg out in an elegant kick. Two knows his angles. Knows his trajectories. His foot throws the woman clean off the roof.

Batman rushes to the roof’s edge. Too late to plunge after her.

All the way down, she screams.

When she hits the ground, Batman retches. “Two,” he rasps, bent over. “What did you _do._ ”

“I didn’t know,” Two tells him, running over to him even as Batman pushes him away. He punches the man who dives after him, and he grunts as he hits the ground. “I was trying to help.”

Batman asked him to come on this case. He is responsible. 

The air cracks.

The _fakes._ He left Two in charge of them.

“I was just trying to help.” Two shoves Batman’s head down safely to the rooftop just before the wave of heat from the bombs hits them.

No. _No._ Dick would never do this. Dick would never--

Batman was trying to help, too.

 

_”Mood stabilizer...flammable...concentrated, exacerbated by vaporization due to heat--fume inhalation…”_

_“But what does that mean?”_

_“We’re--we’re working on it, sir.”_

_“Find out.”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

_“Find out. Fix it.”_

 

“You don’t need them. You only need me.” Dick paws at his face, fingers catching on the edges of Batman’s cowl. They’re kneeling in the foyer, Batman’s suit incredibly out of place in the upper manor. Dick’s not armored at all, only in pajamas, scarlet-stained around the neck and down the chest.

Grabbing his hands, Batman stills them in his gloved fingers.

“Come on, let me--” Dick’s fingers twist in his grip. “I know how to--”

Batman pulls down his cowl himself. Once he had the shock sensors set to turn off urn in response to Dick. No more.

Betrayed, Dick stares at him. “You don’t trust me,” he whispers. A huff of laughter, a strained shadow of its former self. “I guess I can’t blame you.”

His heart seizes in his chest. He says shortly, “I don’t trust anyone.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt you. Or Alfred.” Dick’s voice trembles, and Batman has to snatch his wrist out of the air instead when he tries to touch the gouges he’s torn down his face. His other hand roots for the discarded shard of vase, and Batman snaps forward to pin both of his palms to the carpet. “Bruce, please. I just want _him_ to go away.”

He swallows and peels off his gloves so he can hold his hands, skin to blood-sticky skin. “The League might be able to help. If you want to come with me today.” While Dick used to follow Batman there sometimes, in the black-and-white guise he took after Robin died, nowadays he leaves only at night, going no further than Gotham streets. Batman stays with him. This is the first League comm he has answered in months.

“Why do you even want to go to the Watchtower? They think you’re crazy,” Dick tells him. “They think we’re both crazy. They’re just looking for a chance to kick you out and lock me up.”

Batman squeezes his hands hard enough to hurt. Breathes hard. Superman, while he is suspicious of Dick, supports Batman in his decision to take care of him on his own. Wonder Woman still fights with her back to him after the split. The others must trust Batman’s judgment somewhat, as their once-leader. He has to believe--

“How long has it been since you last spoke to them?”

How long…? Batman can’t--Batman can’t _remember._

“Look at you,” Dick says raggedly. “Everyone’s left you. I’m all you have left.”

How long has it been?

Wrestling against him, Dick frees his hands. 

Batman lunges to restrain him, but Dick only wraps his arms around his broader form. “I won’t leave you, Bruce.” He holds him like Batman is the child who heard his mother scream and saw the cage around her for the first time. “I won’t ever leave you.”

 

The susurrus of the sheets around Bruce’s hips mingle with Dick’s moans as he moves inside him.

Today, Dick asked quietly, so quietly, for Bruce to turn off the lights, and Bruce obliged. But he cannot control the cruel creep of moonlight over their intimacy. It catches on carved muscle. Silver scars. His sweet, full lips open against the pillow, gasping.

Bruce’s hand drops from holding Dick’s thigh around his waist.

Dick sighs shakily and hoists his thighs higher, but he lets Bruce’s thrusts grow languid.

While Bruce cannot hush the moon as he makes love to Dick, he can trap them a pocket of warm dark with his arms on either side of his head.

Dick likes it. Or so his body tells him when he goes tight around Bruce. His body says more than his mouth these days. More than anything he has said or not said since Barbara stayed his hand that night, it’s the mercury grace of him flowing alongside Bruce down the streets and across the rooftops that tells Bruce how happy he is to be back on patrol. 

“What are you thinking?” It’s not a question Dick has to ask. Four years since he split, and he is sharper than he has ever been. Manipulative. Needy.

Bending over him, Bruce kisses his silk ink hairline. His palm slides under Dick’s cheek, gentle _gentle._ He cups his face and turns Dick so he faces him fully. Both sides. “I love you.”

Dick stares up at him, breath rattling in young lungs. One canny, cloudy eye. One diving, drowning blue. “Which part of me?”

Bruce’s thumbs sketch up his cheeks, one smooth, one scarred. _”You.”_

**Author's Note:**

>  **warnings:** graphic violence, body horror, self-harm, mentions of death, threats of violence, mental illness, suggestion of underage, toxic relationship dynamics, abuse, manipulation, dubious consent. this may not cover all the bases, so again, read at your own risk.
> 
> this is _the_ trickiest thing i've ever written, but i'm glad i took on the challenge.
> 
> if you want to say hi, come find me on my [tumblr!](http://2-weird-4.tumblr.com/)


End file.
